By There are not many animals that can mess with adult porbeagle sharks — or at least, that’s what researchers used to think. But then, in 2020, a porbeagle longer than Shaquille O’Neal is tall went missing nearly six months after it was fitted with tracking devices.
Fortunately for researchers, one of those devices eventually surfaced, providing clues to the sizeable shark’s fate. The recovered data suggest it was a grisly one — the porbeagle was likely devoured by an even larger great white shark, marine biologist Brooke Anderson and colleagues report September 3 in Frontiers in Marine Science. It’s the first time that the predation of an adult porbeagle has ever been documented, the team says.
